It is a good base for a Poison Umbral Blades dagger with Salt the Wound.
Only 1 of the affixes is good for that though, I’d rather have a dagger base with poison chance implicit.
the % missing hp restored on potion use is quite unique defensive mechanic. If you use Exsanguinous with Last steps, you’re always at big missing hp number, so the dagger gives a lot of potion hp. And then you convert potions to ward.
At 2.5k max hp the dagger adds 750 ward on potion use, which is huge number compared to regular gear affixes.
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That is not how it works.
The “% missing health regained on potion use” from this unique is not converted by “potion health converted to ward”
That’s a big issue I see with more than just a few Uniques – the base the Unique is build on, doesn’t make sense with what the Unique is clearly to be used for. Putting acid/poison on a Crit base just doesn’t make sense. But that’s just part of a bigger issue I have with the item base system. Where something useful for your build might have a lvl 20-50ish base, but nothing higher lvl. So you’re stuck with lower raw numbers on your base item, automatically gimping your min/max potential compared to one who has synergy with a higher level base item. That, and I have to wonder why there are any belt bases other than Bronze and Noble.
You definitely need to differeniate Uniques and regular items here.
I think since they reworked/overhauled all the weapon item types, there are at least 3-5 end-game viable bases for all items types, for some categories even more than 5.
There will always be some build, that doesn’t have the most ideal base type available in a specific weapon category, but most skills do not have weapon requirements anyway, so there will almost certainly be a very good alternative in another weapon category.
Now when talking about uniques all of this doesn’t matter, because they devs have the freedom to do whatever they want (they are even unique only base types).
But a lot of the times, when a unique has a non-synergistic or low-level base type, this is due to balancing.
There are a lot of uniques that could use way strogner base types, but that would automatically make the items much more powerful and then they either need to:
- make the uniques rarer
- need to nerf the other stats on that unique item.
In for Last Epoch there is one system that play even mroe into the rarity: Legendary Crafting.
Having a item that is not as strong and rare can be a positive in two ways: getting your hands on it easier/faster and also min-maxing it with a high LP version.
And then there are also uniques, where it makes sense, that the base item is not particularly strong.
For example Aberrant Call: If that Unique would be on a higher adaptive spell damage base, bone curse would automatically become a must pick, because of the nature of the unique itself (summoning massive amounts of fast hitting minions), which would hurt build diversity.
There are a lot of uniques where I can see people being disappointed, them being low or mid-level only, but the legendary systems makes them so much more worth compared to other similar games.
Regarding belts (and armour in general), I do agree, that there are a lot of classes that have lackluster base types in some slots. For me personally Acolyte Helmet slots is lacking severly.
Yeah, I’ll admit I’ve had the issue with bases more with uniques than with normal items. But there have been more than a couple instances where I was disappointed in the lvl at which the base-type I wanted to use capped much lower than I had hoped.
I do understand what you’re saying about Uniques. And maybe that’s part of the design decision – instead of making a Unique the clear BiS, make it a choice: better overall stats, or neat ability(ies) X(Y and Z). But, then again, don’t we already have that in being able to customize AND re-roll stats on a normal item, as opposed to being stuck with whatever is on the Unique. This, of course, changes slightly with the Legendary system, but that alone would make me think that Unique bases are less revolved around power limitations and/or player choice-making… Also, as you pointed out, being a Unique would eliminate the item level requirement being a consideration – they could make the requirement whatever they wanted, instead of relying on the base for that.
That is another great point. If uniques would be clear best in slot it would take away a lot of the decision making.
Even for builds, where there is a clear “BIS unique”, it will most likely lack some other stats, often times defensive capabilities etc.
They already did that one some uniques, that are on low level bases. There are a couple of uniques with “low-level bases”, but with relatively high stats on the unique itself, but the level requirement is very high, much higehr than the base item.
For Example Smoke Weaver is a Lvl 52 Unique on a Lvl 1 Base Dagger (Poignard), but has 40-50 flat melee damage, which is like T6/7 worth of an affix, plus tons of other crazy high stats.
Yeah, and that’s where I struggle with it. D3 went way overboard with the Unqiues/Legendaries being BiS/required. You can’t play an effective build without being fully gear in Uniques and Legendaries due to their set bonuses and synergies.
In that regard, I have to keep guessing what EHG’s strategy with Unqiues/Legendaries/Sets is. Is it to use them as cute effect items? Powerful artifacts? Or build defining required gear for certain playstyles? Or a mish-mash of all 3? It really seems like the “all 3” option, but that presents a very unique (no pun) challenge to make them some combination of: desired, powerful (comparatively to crafted gear), interesting and build defining – all without tipping to far in the too weak/too powerful buckets.
I guess my issue, on a personal level, is my overall ‘Meh’ feeling towards them dropping. In D3, the feeling is utter disappointment when they don’t drop, since they are the only useful thing that drops. But in LE, there’s a severe lack of enthusiasm towards them dropping, being that so few are BiS, or powerful enough to compete with a well-rolled Rare, and especially a desireable Exalted roll. At lower levels, I like seeing them drop because it’s 500 gold! At higher levels, I’ll glace at LP (anything less than 2 better be on a rare drop or near-perfect rolls), or I don’t even pick it up. I suppose the excitement level could change if I ever see an LP 3+ T3/T4 Julra drop, or any LP Argentus, but even then… odds are the rolls would make me shed a tear instead. I really wish there was some way to use ‘trash’ Uniques to shatter and create runes allowing you to re-roll stat ranges on Uniques/Set items.
I agree, that most unique drops do not trigger any particularly good “loot excitment moments” aka dopamine rush.
But the Legendary/LP system that came with 084 definitely re-ignited that a little bit.
I do agree, that LE could use a system, that can use duplicate uniques in some capacity.
But on the other hand I absolutely like that uniques are completely set-in-stone in LE, this makes good rolled ones soooooo much more exciting. And IMO it completely warrants any of the “feel bad moments”, when you get a very rare uniques with a bad roll. The one single uniques that is almost perfectly rolled makes it all worth for me.
I still have not even filled 1/4 of my “God Tier rolls Unique” stash after thousands of hours playtime.
Yeah, but it’s a problem when the “feel bad moments” severely outweigh the dopamine ones. That is where people quit out of frustration. But, I’ll also concede the opposite is also true, but people quitting from boredom.
So far, for me, the “feels bad moments” are the hands-down winners of my Unique drop experience. 20+ Julra runs for my first pair of gloves… with a min +spell dmg roll. And the same with my first shitty-roll Apathy Maw (non-LP) after 30+ Orobyss kills. I had basically stopped playing the characters I wanted these items on because of the drop rate, and unfortunately the drops themselves didn’t re-ignite my desire to play them either :\
It is certainly a difficult balance between making stuff accessable, without making it worthless.
For your Julra and Shade drops, both of these numbers seem particularly unlucky, which obviously doesn’t help you right now.
But generally I still think LE has a very good balance between having rare drops and working perfectly in a solo-environment without any trading or outside sources required.
But before we de-rail this thread too much, I wanted to start a very similar discussion anyway. That discussion is not strictly about uniques, but they are a big part of that.
So feel free to add your 2 cents there as well:
Well I have a set of 4 LP Fighting Chance gloves. I have found absolutely no use for them 
Lol… but seriously, if you got a good roll on the damage taken affix, it could be useful for any melee build - free stats… based on my experience creating Legendaries tho… getting the perfect exalted item to use for the craft is, imho, harder than finding the unique… I found 3lp Maw relatively easily and then must have spent another 50h of play trying to find a 2h axe exalt with the right affixes to create a legendary from… eventually I gave up and chose an exalt with “good enough” rolls…
The problem is, with a lot of these low/mid level uniques, that are relatively common to find with 3 or 4LP, that the level requirement will be raised too, if you slap that many affixes on it.
Making them a strict endgame item with level requirement of 60+
I think this is a major flaw of the legendary system, since it denies any possibility of exciting low level leveling legendaries.
At at that state of your character progression, when you could equipt them there might already be other, better alternatives.
Sure it does… but then the opposite problem would happen… massively overpowered levelling legendaries that make running the first 60 levels of a new char boring by potentially one tapping all but the tankiest of bosses in the campaign… In single player no-one would mind and I would agree that these would be cool finds, but in MP / competitive play this could be a problem(?).
Its definitely tricky…
I don’t have a strong opinion on this, as I would likely not make use of any of these anyway.
But isn’t that exactly what a lot of people want? Easier and faster leveling for successive characters?
I don’t think that a couple of legendaries would completely make overpowered characters where you 1-shot everything and you cannot die anymore.
Also as you just pointed out earlier, you also need to find and sacrifice exalted items with potentially 3 or 4 good stats for that slot for that, which will only come after you probably spend more than a few dozen hours in endgame with one of your main chars.
Now that you mention it… the Exalted link is probably the key here…
What does it matter if someone created Legendaries for alt levelling… the Farming for the Uniques & Exalted items need is going to be a chore anyway… and if competitive play is simply a clean slate league or similar then you couldnt bring prebuilt items in anyway and would need to be damn lucky or work hard to get them…
Ok… you have convinced me… There needs to be some sort of limit to the increase in level requirement for the creation of legendaries… Maybe its something simple that each LP added only adds 3-5 levels (i.e. max 20) to the original uniques level requirement irrespective of the level of the exalted item used… that would let legendaries still be useful for lower levelling… and make very little difference for higher level ones…
I am almost certain, that the formula to detemine the level requirement of an item is the exact same for legendaries and regular magic/rare/exalted items.
And for legendaries it only matter if that levle is higher than the unique level requirement.
I am ok with having some level restrictions on legendaries to not have absolutely bonker items from level one, but the formula needs to be changed or adjusted for legendaries at least slightly IMO.
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